The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) will Wednesday embark on a nationwide protest over a bill to remove the National Minimum Wage from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent list.
A bill sponsored by Garba Datti Mohammed (APC Kano) which seeks to transfer the National Minimum Wage from Exclusive Legislative List to Concurrent Legislative List has passed first and secondary reading at the House of Representatives.
The NLC described the move as a “political mischief’, and attempt to further dehumanize and enslave Nigerian workers through the downgrading of their wage status from living to minimum and now to enslave wages.
A communique after a virtual meeting on March 2, the NLC National Working Committee (NEC) said the bill was an attempt to negate the struggle and flight by Nigerian workers to get the National Minimum Wage passed as an Act of Parliament 40 years ago.
“Let us remind the political class that the National Minimum Wage is a global standard adopted by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) through Convention 26 which was ratified by Nigeria on June 16, 1961. The ratification of the Convention was given statutory effect by signing of the National Minimum Wage by the President Shehu Shagari government in May 1981,” the NLC said.
It said the rational politicians’ insistence of moving the National Minimum Wage to Concurrent Legislative List was to enable state governments negotiate and fix their minimum wage against the interest of workers.
